Mother's Day
by GunBunnyCentral
Summary: It was a completely innocent question, of course - Alex had no way of knowing it was really a minefield in disguise.


Notes: Written for ofcourseit-sinyourheadharry over on Tumblr - she requested non-slashy Nikita/Alex, talking about Nikita's childhood in her foster home...

{*****}

_May 2nd, 2010 - not long before insertion..._

"So what were your parents like?"

It was a completely innocent question, of course - Alex had no way of knowing it was really a minefield in disguise. She'd been babbling happily about her own parents for the last little while - her mother in particular, since she'd just realized that Mother's Day was only a week away.

Nikita had been a little uncomfortable with it at first, but had let Alex keep talking once she'd realized that Alex was dwelling on her happy memories of her mother. It had actually fit in quite nicely with the unusually calm and lazy Sunday afternoon they were having - Alex was painting Nikita's toenails whatever ungodly bright shade had most recently caught her attention while Nikita reread one of her favorite Dashiel Hammett novels for the umpteenth time.

Nikita hadn't anticipated Alex's all too innocent question, or the fact that those six words still had the power to make her blood run cold. They summoned up memories she'd literally anesthetized herself to escape - memories she'd thought she'd put far, far behind her.

"Typical bad foster family cliche," Nikita said finally, knowing Alex was waiting for an answer. "I ran away when I was sixteen and never looked back."

Unfortunately, that only piqued Alex's curiosity. "You grew up in a foster home? I didn't know that."

The silent accusation hung in the air, even if Nikita was mostly imagining it - _I didn't know that because you've never told me a damn thing about your past_. Sighing inwardly, she tried to work out a version of the truth that she was comfortable telling the girl she'd come to think of as a baby sister, sometimes even a daughter. "I never knew my birth parents - my biological mother died in childbirth, and she apparently had no family or friends to tell anyone who my father was."

Alex paused from her toenail painting long enough to squeeze Nikita's leg sympathetically. "I'm sorry."

Nikita had meant to say something nonchalant to steer Alex away from how much even the few words they'd exchanged were affecting her - instead, she kept telling the story like she was running on autopilot or something. "There was no one to claim me, so the state placed me with Caroline and Gary Mears when I was just a baby."

This, of course, brought them back full circle to Alex's initial question. "Were they good parents? I mean, you ran away so it went bad somewhere, but still..."

Nikita smiled, completely unaware that she did so, or that her voice softened as she spoke. "Caroline was a good mother, or at least she tried her best to be. She couldn't have loved me any more if she'd actually given birth to me. The feeling was mutual - I think it was love at first sight for both of us."

Alex, with only Nikita's tone and words to go by, smiled back. "That doesn't sound so bad. What was Gary like?"

She immediately regretted asking that question. Nikita's entire expression changed to the sort of anger and raw hatred that Alex only ever saw when they were discussing Division - and her voice was as cold as Alex had ever heard it. "Gary Mears was an abusive pig who desperately needed a bullet in the head."

Not really sure what to do with that unexpected assessment, Alex forced herself to continue painting Nikita's toenails as if unfazed. With both Nikita's feet in her lap, though, she could feel the tension running through the other woman, and realized she'd somehow stumbled onto an unhealed wound that she'd never even suspected existed. "Do you want to talk about it? God knows I've told you all my horror stories about the brothels..."

Nikita opened her mouth to say no, but - once again - kept going anyway despite herself. "Gary beat Caroline, all the time. He beat me, too, though Caroline protected me as much as she could. I did my best to make sure she didn't have to, but I was just a kid."

Nikita fell silent again after that. Sensing that Nikita needed to keep telling this story, whether she wanted to or not, Alex gave her as gentle a nudge as she could to get her talking again. "Is that why you ran away? No one would blame you."

Nikita just shook her head. "I'd never have left Caroline there alone with him. She died when I was fourteen. I stayed afterward until I was sixteen because I had nowhere else to go, but there were... other reasons I left."

Alex knew the haunted, faraway look that came over Nikita's face all too well. "The abuse wasn't just physical, was it?"

Nikita shook her head again. "Gary came into my room the night of my twelfth birthday. He said that I was finally old enough to learn a few things about how the world worked. He also said that if I screamed or told Caroline what he'd done, he'd take it out on her."

Nikita shuddered, staring off into empty space. "I didn't make a sound - not then, or any of the other nights he came back."

"What... happened to Caroline?" Alex dreaded the answer, but she had to know if Gary had killed his wife if she wanted to have any chance of fully understanding what Nikita had gone through.

Nikita's eyes filled up with tears, and she swiped at them angrily as they ran down her cheeks. "She died in a car accident. I had finally managed to tell her what Gary had been doing to me, and she was on her way to see a lawyer. If I'd just kept my damn mouth shut, she'd still be alive..."

Alex capped the bottle of nail polish and set it aside, suddenly feeling like the older sister as a weird sense of deja vu set in. "Nikita, listen to me. None of it was your fault - not the abuse, or Caroline's accident - any more than what happened to me was mine. Remember what you told me about that?"

Nikita didn't answer, but Alex could tell she was trying to compose herself, so she let it go. After a moment or two, Nikita had recovered enough to speak again. "I've only told two other people about what Gary did to me. It's been over ten years since I ran away - I don't know why it's still so hard to talk about."

Alex shrugged. "He hurt you, and he hurt Caroline, and you were afraid of him - seems simple enough to me."

Nikita laughed then, sharp and bitter. "That wasn't even the worst of what he did to me."

Alex couldn't think of anything to say to that - had no idea, in fact, what the hell to do to fix things - but Nikita had apparently decided that she needed to tell the whole story anyway. "Gary liked to gamble, and it only got worse after Caroline died. He ended up thousands of dollars in debt to his bookie - when the bookie came to collect, he saw me and told Gary that he'd clear out the debt if he could have me for the night."

Alex could feel the blood drain from her face - as terrible as it had been to go through, everything with Vlad had been strictly business, a pimp dealing with his stable. To be betrayed like that by the man who was supposed to be your father... "Oh my god..."

Nikita didn't even seem to hear her. "I didn't fight back or resist at all, but Gary's bookie still beat me badly enough that I couldn't get out of bed for two days. When I did finally get back on my feet again, I overheard the two of them talking about how I was good enough to make them a lot of money if they 'rented' me out."

"They were trying to figure out how much to charge," Nikita continued. She shuddered again and took a deep breath, but this time both actions seemed almost cleansing. "I ran away the first chance I got, and - well, you know the rest of the story."

Alex did know the rest of it, or at least most of it in broad outlines, and could easily fill in what she didn't from her own experiences. Nikita had been all alone on the streets at sixteen, traumatized and with nothing to choose from but options that ran from bad to unbearable - she'd done the best she could, but it was no wonder she'd ended up using drugs to escape her life.

True rock bottom hadn't happened until Nikita had finally started trying to get her life back together, though, which was beyond tragic. Alex didn't know the details, just that Nikita had ended up on Death Row for killing a cop during a relapse - Nikita wouldn't tell her anything more than that, and it had never felt right to pressure her about it.

Alex, as far as she was concerned, knew what she needed to know anyway - whatever Nikita had been through, it had ended with her in the right place at the right time with the right skills to save Alex's life, not once but twice. She'd already shed plenty of tears for the things she and Nikita had both suffered - probably enough, even, to make up for the ones Nikita refused to shed for herself.

She wasn't quite sure what to do about the here and now, when Nikita was finally letting herself express all the things she usually kept buried, but it ended up being easier than she'd expected. She just kept the tissues coming, and listened until Nikita had talked herself out and finally just drifted off into a much needed oblivion.

It seemed to Alex that the sleep Nikita fell into was a hell of a lot more peaceful than any she'd seen before.

_May 9th, 2010 - one week later..._

By the time Nikita woke up, it was mid-morning and Alex had already been up for a while - atypical, but not entirely unheard of, and Nikita smiled a little as she looked over to see her seated at their computer.

It was actually Alex's laughter that had woken her up - she was obviously watching something online, and it was making her laugh a lot louder than she realized with her headphones muffling the noise.

Nikita, never a good sleeper at the best of times, closed her eyes and burrowed deeper under the covers - Sundays were the one day she allowed them both to take a break from Alex's training - but her eyes fluttered open again as she realized there was something beside her on her pillow.

It was a small wrapped package, about the same size and shape as the boxes that necklaces or rings came in, and it had a note attached. Alex had obviously left it for her, though she had no idea why - opening it up carefully to save the ribbon and the paper, she found that her unexpected present was indeed, as predicted, a piece of jewelry.

What she couldn't have predicted was the silver angel pendant accented with a garnet and a diamond - her birthstone, and Alex's, respectively. That caused some sort of connection to form in Nikita's brain, and she finally opened the tiny card that had been attached to the gift, grinning at Alex's familiar scrawl.

_Nikita,_

_I know this is probably really lame, and I hope it doesn't come across all weird, but I saw this and thought of everything you've done to help me. I never say it out loud, but you're like some kind of kick ass guardian angel/big sister/surrogate mom all rolled into one, and I know Caroline would be proud of you._

_Happy Mother's Day,_

_Alex_


End file.
